Jan Baptist Weenix (Amsterdam 1621 – c. 1659 De Haar)

He was the son of the Enkhuizen (house) painter Jan Jansz Weines (?-?). According to Houbraken, who was quite accurately informed by Weenix’s son, Jan Weenix (1641-1719), he trained successively with Jan Micker (1599-1664) in Amsterdam, Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651) in Utrecht and finally with Claes Moeyaert (1591-1655) in Amsterdam. In 1639 he married Josina (1619-1662), a daughter of the painter Gillis d’Hondecoeter (1575-1638). Despite the fairly recent birth of his son Jan, he decided in March 1643 to go to Rome (via Rouen) ‘to put his art to the test’, as he himself put it. In Rome he joined the Bentvueghels (Northern artists’ society) and was given the nickname ‘Rattle’ (‘Ratel’), because he ‘was hasty in his speech and spoke somewhat jerkily’. Houbraken noted that he worked for Camillo Pamphili (1622-1666), who was made a cardinal in 1644. Invoices in the Pamphili archive also show that he supplied several paintings to Camillo’s uncle, Pope Innocent X (reg. 1644-55), in 1645-46. After his return from Italy, the connection with the pope gave him the idea of signing his works ‘Gio[vanni] Batt[ist]a Weenix’, those being Innocent’s original given names (Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj). Weenix was back in Amsterdam in 1647, and that is where Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613-1670) painted his portrait (now lost). Two years later he settled in Utrecht, where he became a warden of the Guild of St Luke in 1649 and remained until 1656. He spent the last years of his life in the Kasteel Ter Meij, a country house near De Haar, near Utrecht, which he rented from the nobleman Hendrik Valckenaer (d. 1669). His belongings were auctioned there on 25 April 1659, so that is very probably where he died earlier that year.

Jan Baptist Weenix was a versatile artist. He owes his fame mainly to his Italianate landscapes and harbour views, but he also painted still-lives, portraits and history pieces. Just over a dozen of the surviving paintings are dated, the earliest is the Blinding of Tobit of 1642 in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. 1204 (OK)),¹¹W. Stechow, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix’, The Art Quarterly 11 (1948), Stechow 1948, p. 184. and the last is the Italian Landscape with Inn and Ruins, from October 1658, in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 901).²²Q. Buvelot and C. Vermeeren, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis: A Summary Catalogue, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, pp. 332-33. He collaborated on several works with other artists, including Nicolaes Berchem (1621-1683) for the Calling of St Matthew, also in the Mauritshuis (inv. no. 1058).³³E. Runia and Q. Buvelot, Mauritshuis, Koninklijk Kabinet der Schilderijen. Hoogtepunten uit de collective, coll. cat. The Hague 2014, pp. 120-21. Weenix’s pupils were his son Jan and nephew Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1635-1695).

E. de Groot

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet vande edele vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661, p. 277; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), pp. 77-83, 111, 113, 131, III (1721), pp. 70, 72; A. Bredius, ‘Een testament van Jan Baptist Weenicx’, Oud Holland 45 (1928), no. 1, pp. 177-78; W. Stechow, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix’, The Art Quarterly 11 (1948), pp. 181-98; R.J. Ginnings, The Art of Jan Baptist and Jan Weenix, Newark (DE) 1970 (PhD diss., University of Delaware); C. Schloss, ‘A Note on Jan Baptist Weenix's Patronage in Rome’, Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his 60th Birthday, CITY 1983, pp. 237-38; A.C. Steland, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix in Rom, 1643-1647: Zur Datierung des zeichnerischen Frühwerks anhand von Signaturveränderungen’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 33 (1994), pp. 87-112; J.A. Spicer et al., Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, exh. cat. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museums)/Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery)/London (National Gallery) 1997-98, pp. 390-91 (text by M.J. Bok); A.C. Steland, ‘Drawings by Dutch Italianate Painters’, in L.B. Harwood (ed.), Inspired by Italy: Dutch Landscape Painting, 1600-1700, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery) 2002, pp. 42-63; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 215; A.A. van Wagenberg-Ter Hoeven, Jan Baptist en Jan Weenix: The Paintings, 2 vols., Zwolle 2018; RKD Artists https://rkd.nl/artists/83250